Lean in High-Mix/Low-Volume industry: a systematic literature review

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to explore current state-of-the-art on lean in High-Mix/Low-Volume (HMLV) industry. For this purpose, authors propose a systematic literature review of 110 articles published in 66 peer-reviewed international journals that explicitly discuss lean in HMLV context. The purpose is to investigate research that is available, in order to analyse theoretical aspects of lean considerations in HMLV context, identify the level of lean maturity, the scope of lean, the way lean is implemented, and tools and practices that are commonly used. The results of the analysis show that current research is mainly focussed on practice, with little attention to theory development. The maturity of lean implementation is rather low, as articles mostly address obvious waste reduction, while more advanced concepts such as variability management and buffering remain under-researched. Studies are often operationally and internally oriented, with shop-floor improvements being the area of interest, while embedding lean in strategy is not sufficiently addressed. Lean implementation frameworks presented in the literature are usually tool-based, addressing a narrow set of simplified cases that do not take fully into account complexities of HMLV industry. Lastly, a rather narrow set of tools is used, with tools often being adapted without proper consideration of relevance of a certain tool for HMLV industry. As publications reviewing lean in HMLV context are scarce, this study presents valuable insight and serves as an excellent resource for research on the subject, since it not only presents the existing knowledge in a structured way, but also identifies possible directions for future research.